


FOR ALL THE FALLEN UNKNOWN HEROES

by wellmet



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 19:11:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13347654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wellmet/pseuds/wellmet
Summary: After Bond leaves with his car Q  remembers all the other 007's and Mallory remembers M





	FOR ALL THE FALLEN UNKNOWN HEROES

FOR ALL THE FALLEN UNKNOWN HEROES

Meretseger 2016

Q sighed as James Bond took his car and left to start on the rest of his life. They had shared a last word sparing match that had made Bond smile and then it was goodbye and thank you and Q was alone in the quiet darkness. He sighed again and went to put on his coat and go home. He'd waited, knowing that 007 - no James, now, - would come for his rebuilt car. The last bills for parts and labour had been paid while James was in Switzerland so he would have known it was waiting for him. He went back to the bench he'd been standing by to pick up the cardboard box that had been put there for him. 

The cats welcomed Q at the front door, mewing a welcome. He bent down to pat them and hung up his coat, taking the little box with him he headed for the kitchen and a cuppa. While the kettle boiled he cut the twine around the box and took off the lid, wondering what he had been left. 

The kettle boiled and Q ignored it for a moment, taking out the tiny bottle and holding it up to his eyes so he could clearly see the even tinier sailing ship inside it. Then he laughed and put the bottle down to make tea. 

Q sat down at the kitchen table with his tea and the sandalwood box he kept his 007 gifts in. It was traditional; each of the double 0 agents had a 'friend' to come home to, some one who waited for them to return to London, to MI6 and the Quartermaster was the friend to 007. Even the house the present Q lived in was the Quartermasters' quarters. He had cleaned out all of Major Boothroyd's belongings and redecorated and bought new furniture. But he'd kept the old moggie Boothroyd left, of course. Luckily the old cat got along with his own younger cat, after the traditional week or so of ignoring each other. 

Taking a deep sip of his tea Q opened the box and took out all the other gifts from past 007's. The first was a model car, still in its box. Sleek and grey the vehicle was exactly the same as the one Bond had driven. It even had the revolving number plates! The real car had exploded into a million pieces when hit by a rocket. Q had always felt that that was just the way that Bond would have liked to go. 

Q put the car aside and took out the ring box that held, perhaps, the saddest of the mementoes. Inside, the gold still bright and unscratched, was a wedding ring. Bond had only worn it for a day, Blofeld had killed Tracy Bond as they left for their honeymoon and a dream had ended. 007 had returned to MI6, given the Quartermaster the ring box and gone on his next mission. And died of a gun shot to the heart.

Next was a pack of tarot cards, wrapped in a fine silk cloth. The woman who had used them had lost her ability to see the future and tell truth from lies when she slept with the next James Bond. Her abilities had been lost with her virginity and she had died. The cards were the last of a man who had died when his car had slid off a mountain road and into the Mediterranean Sea. 

Next was an envelope with a concert programme from Carnegie Hall. A famous Russian cellist appearing for the first time in the USA. Alongside the name one of the pieces was the cryptic note, 'for James.' That Bond had died when he was given an experimental drug meant to loosen his tongue and tell his captors everything he knew about England's security services. The drug had been too strong, Bond's loyalty too deep. The conflict had ended in the death of 007. And Queen and country had been safe.

The next memento was perhaps as awful as the barely worn wedding ring of a previous 007. Inside a clear plastic box was a piece of aluminium, part of the dish of a radio telescope. It was the memory of a betrayal that had cut too deep for that Bond to live with. 006, Alec Trevalyn, Bond's dearest friend, brother in arms and traitor to both that friendship and the Secret Service. Bond had killed the man he had thought dead and that had broken something deep inside him. Something that even the supposed death of his friend and being a spy with a licence to kill had not touched. An African warlord with ambitions as big and cruel as his wide white toothed smile had killed that 007. Slowly.

 

Q carefully packed the box again, putting the ship in a bottle in with the other symbols of lives lost, of disasters averted; gifts from men willing to give up their lives so that others might live and be free. As he shut the lid the Quartermaster whispered a child's almost forgotten prayer 'for those who have gone before us'. One day, soon, there would be another memento to add to the box another man to remember. 

M stood in his office, looking out of the window at the night-scape of the city. In his hands he held a small glass phial that contained a chip of stone, dark stone of the far north, a piece of ancient Scotland. The chip was darker on one side, blood stained. If Q was the keeper of the memories of all the 007s then M was the keeper of the memories of former M's. 

For a country that has no memory of its past, that does not treasure it fallen heroes will not have heroes to step forward when they are needed.


End file.
